The importance of Coaching in Psychology

Coaching is a concept that, despite being increasingly installed in a wide variety of sectors and job markets, many people still do not understand. Partly due to the Anglo-Saxon origin of the term and partly due to its novelty, there are even those who assume that the role of the coach is basically the same as that of a psychotherapist, while others take a very different position and believe that coaching consists only of inform and express themselves, that is, carry out a communicative exchange about the emotions or motivations of a person who seeks these services.

Neither of these two beliefs is correct: coaching is not psychotherapy, nor is it limited only to the world of words. In this article We will see how coaching covers a whole series of interesting tasks and processes that contribute a lot to psychology as a discipline.

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How are coaching and psychology related?

What most people understand by a psychologist is fundamentally a psychotherapist psychologist, someone whose work falls within the services of treatment and assistance to mental health and who attends patients to help them mitigate or overcome a certain source of discomfort that affects their quality of life in the day to day.

In fact, this same idea of ​​what a psychologist is is reflected in what motivates most people to decide on the career University of Psychology: at least in the Spanish context, the objective of the majority of the students who consider taking these studies is dedicate themselves to offering therapy or, in general, to be able to help people deal with emotional problems (and enjoy the prestige that this type of activities).

Now, as the first-year students soon discover, psychology is much more than a set of techniques applied in the context of psychotherapy: what this science studies is as broad as human existence, since it focuses on behavior and mental processes, that is, the management of emotions in general, belief systems, social interactions, the interpretation of reality that people make, etc. Technically, moreover, psychology is not limited to the human, but also encompasses behavior. of animals and even their abilities to think: that is how wide this field of performance is professional.

But the idea that the psychologist is in charge of helping people with mental disorders is still very ingrained in popular culture. This is because in the beginning, this was partly true: the first psychologists studied topics such as alterations in perception, how diseases of the nervous system affected thinking, and characteristics of diseases mental.

Only in the second half of the 20th century did walls begin to break down that separated the broad definition of psychology from what psychologists were in charge of doing in practice. That is why In recent decades, the scope of work of psychologists has greatly expanded and diversified, and so have their goals and the needs they can respond to.. And this is where coaching comes into play.

Coaching is, fundamentally, one of the fields of work of psychology; Specifically, it is dedicated to intervening in processes related to the professional and personal development of people, as well as in team management. There is no qualitative distinction between psychology and coaching, but rather it is "labeled" with the word "coaching" certain occupations that, despite remaining within the competence of psychologists, are far from the world of mental health and psychotherapy.

If there is a fundamental difference between the psychologist who offers therapy and the coach psychologist, it is the following: the former works above all helping people whose quality of life is affected by a psychological problem that affects their way of feeling, thinking or behaving, while the second helps those people not so much to face a discomfort, but to enhance their well-being by satisfying needs that go beyond the absence of emotional pain, stress, etc.

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Misunderstandings about coaching

One of the peculiarities of the term "coaching" is that its application in the professional world is not regulated. That is why many people claim to offer coaching services despite not being psychologists; instead, psychologists can only be considered as such if they have completed their university studies in this field.

So that, It is common for those who are unaware of this fact to hire the services of a "coach" even though he or she does not have a degree in Psychology.. It should also be noted that a person who has taken coaching courses but does not have a degree in Psychology does not know do anything that psychologists do not already know how to do, given that as we have seen, coaching is not outside the scope of psychology.

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What kind of jobs are done through coaching?

Some of the most representative areas of intervention in coaching are the following:

• Management of teams and departments in companies and organizations.
• Development of leadership skills in managers, CEOs, teachers, etc.
• Teaching motivation strategies for coaches, directors, CEOs, etc.
• Teaching self-motivation strategies for professionals, opponents, athletes, etc.
• Enhancement of social skills and non-verbal language for communicators, commercials, directors, etc.
• Accompaniment in the development of personal branding and brand management.
• Training in negotiation skills and conflict resolution.
• Accompaniment in processes of personal development and self-realization.

As we can see, these are areas of professional performance that, despite not consisting of treating psychopathologies, they are capable of both bringing well-being to people and improving the dynamics of communication and social interaction in companies, education centers, training processes for athletes, etc.

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Do you want to train in Coaching Psychology?

If you are thinking of training and professionalizing yourself in the areas of work that we have been talking about, you may be interested in the Master in Psychology of Coaching in online modality that offers the European University. This training program lasts 6 months and consists of 30 ECTS credits; It is aimed at psychologists who want to learn the theory and practice of the phases of the coaching process, the techniques and strategies more used in this area, the specific skills and "soft skills" of the expert psychologist in coaching, team management and team development leadership, and more.

On the other hand, the master's degree also gives the possibility of improving the employability of its students by carrying out external internships and preparing for the accreditation by ICF (International Coaching Federation) as ACTP (Accredited Coach Training Program) and as Psychologist Expert in coaching of the Official Association of Psychologists of Madrid. In addition, all the professors of the master's degree are certified PCC or MCC by the ICF.